We often tell in our articles that only perseverance, work and patience will lead you to success, and you should not rely only on luck. But sometimes incredible stories happen that cannot be called anything other than pure luck. Here are a few random finds that made ordinary people rich, informs Ukr.Media.
Boxes with money
A Utah artist bought a house and began to settle in. While he was in his studio, finishing painting and gathering up his tools, he noticed a piece of carpet sticking out of the ceiling. When the man pulled on it, a hidden passage to the attic opened, where he discovered several dusty boxes of ammunition. Instead of ammunition, the boxes contained rolled-up dollar bills—about $45,000 in total.
The man decided to return the treasure to the previous owners, who were also surprised by the find. According to the main version, their father must have hidden the money for a rainy day so that they would not be found.
This find did not enrich the discoverer, but it replenished the family budget of the former owners of the house.
Treasure in the piano
A couple decided to donate their antique piano to Walford and North Shropshire College. When the instrument was delivered to its new location, the college called in a technician to tune it. When the technician opened the piano, he was surprised to find seven bags filled with sovereigns, old British coins made of gold.
The treasure was valued at $640,000. By the way, according to local law, the treasure goes to the person who found it, not to the owners of the place where it was found. Therefore, the award went not to the former owners of the piano or to the college, but to an ordinary tuner of musical instruments.
Jewels in the chair
This story is very similar to the one told in Ilf and Petrov's novel “12 Chairs”. A couple from Scotland were not very good with money, but they needed new furniture. They decided to buy a used chair at an auction and spent only five pounds sterling on it. The couple used the chair for four years, until the upholstery began to wear out.
Since the couple didn't have the money to reupholster the chair, they simply left it in the attic, where it gathered dust for six years. When the man decided to fix the chair himself and removed the upholstery, he discovered a pair of diamond earrings, a diamond brooch and a diamond ring. The jewelry found was estimated at five thousand pounds sterling.
Car in the garage
A man bought a house in Wyoming for about $300,000. Satisfied with his purchase, he began to look around his possessions and was surprised to find a car in the garage covered in a thick layer of dust. After cleaning it of years of dirt, the man discovered a 1996 Ferrari 330 GT in perfect condition.
You might think that the previous owner simply factored the cost of the car into the total price of the house. But as it turned out later, after an appraisal, the Ferrari is worth half a million dollars.
Australian nugget
Gold prospecting is widespread in Australia. Dozens of prospectors go out into the desert every day and search for gold using various methods.
One such enthusiast was walking with his metal detector near the city of Ballart in the state of Victoria when he came across something shiny on the ground. At first he thought it was some kind of scrap metal, like one of the metal parts of a car. But when he started digging, he realized that he had come across a gold bar, and a huge one at that. It weighed 5.5 kilograms, and the nugget was estimated at 300 thousand dollars.
Golden House
A Frenchman inherited a house from a deceased relative in Normandy, northern France. Upon first inspecting the house, the new owner discovered a small box full of gold coins. Then he found gold coins in a whiskey box. And then several more gold bars hidden everywhere: under furniture, in the bathroom, and even in his clothes.
In total, the new owner found about five thousand gold coins, about forty bars weighing one kilogram each and two bars of twelve kilograms each. The total value of the treasure was estimated at 3.7 million dollars, of which after deducting taxes and debts, he was left with a million as an inheritance.
Backyard Treasures
A farmer from Staffordshire, a county in west central England, left his house with a metal detector to look for his daughter's ring, which she had recently lost, in his backyard. But instead of the ring, he discovered a treasure trove of 1,500 gold and silver objects, which, according to experts, were made around the 7th century AD. Experts have estimated the treasure at five million dollars.
Golden egg
An American bought a metal egg with gold and pearls inside at a flea market for $14,000. Many would say that this is a foolish waste of such a large sum, because even with the great weight of the jewelry, its resale would hardly recoup the costs.
However, the seller did not suspect that he was selling not a jewelry trinket that he had found in one of the houses in the Midwest of the United States, but an antique, a true work of art by the famous master Fabergé.
As a result, a Fabergé egg purchased for $14,000 made a lucky American richer by $33 million.
